VoteSmart Challenge '08Mix a highly charged presidential contest, an historic level of voter registration among young people, and a high-tech set of voting tools for taking the political temperature of an auditorium full of college students, and you have Dominican University of California’s VoteSmart Challenge ’08. https://www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/votesmart-challenge-08https://www.dominican.edu/logo.png

VoteSmart Challenge '08

Mix a highly charged presidential contest, an historic level of voter registration among young people, and a high-tech set of voting tools for taking the political temperature of an auditorium full of college students, and you have Dominican University of California’s VoteSmart Challenge ’08.

The
event, which is free and open to the public, will be held October 23 from 9-11
a.m. in Angelico Hall. The University has suspended classes for the morning in
order to enable students to participate in the VoteSmart Challenge ’08.

“Our
goal is to educate Dominican’s student body, as well as the general public and
local high school students, while creating a highly-participatory forum about
key policy issues," said Dominican University of California President Joseph R. Fink. "We also want to reinforce the importance of being knowledgeable and
involved in the electoral process."

Six
student/faculty teams have spent the past four months studying the Democratic
and Republican parties’ positions on the economy, foreign policy, ethics,
health care, education, and the environment. Each research team will
describe the policy issue and the different candidates’ positions during a
10-minute audio/visual presentation.

After
each presentation, National Public Radio (NPR) ombudsman Alicia Shepard, Barack
Obama campaign finance co-chair Tony West, and Republican party representative
William Grayson will add comments.

Then,
using real-time digital polling keypads, audience members will vote on each
policy issue, prompted by a set of pre-selected questions based on the
presentation. Audience responses will be immediately calculated and real-time
results will be shared.

The technological aspect of the event will appeal to
younger voters.

“Organizations
like Rock the Vote and Declare Yourself are successfully using technology to
get young people interested in the political process,” Fink said. “Real-time
voting technology will enable us to take the political temperature of our
audience at a time when the youth vote is expected to play a major role in
determining our country’s next president.”

The
VoteSmart Challenge ’08 will focus on the policies rather than the candidates
in order to encourage the members of the audience to consider their vote based on issue rather
than party affiliation.